PART 24.

                                    

                                          
SOPHIE'S POV.
                          
The cafeteria looked the same as when she been there before. The memory bought back when she was stuck with Fitz in the healing center. Sophie smiled at thought. How she had found it she didn't know but after a few minutes Keefe came through the door panting.
"You are freakishly fast for someone who just collapsed." He said taking a seat on one of the big throne chairs.
She tried not to let her mind wander off to what happened at the corridor, how close they've been...
It was just Keefe messing around Sophie told herself. She looked towards him to see him pale and sweaty.
"Keefe?" She made her way to his side and touched his hand. Keefe had always been fast and Sophie hadn't even walked that fast and yet Keefe's temperature has risen.
"It's nothing. I just need to catch my breath..." He didn't look fine, Sophie looked around and bought a vial of youth to him. He drank it all in one gulp and flashed a big smile at her. She knew it wasn't true.
She tried to take on a lighter topic. 
"So are you going to tell me now how you found this place?" Her heart warmed at the gratefulness in his eyes for the subject change.
"Nope." He said while taking a custard burst to his hand. 
"Sophie scrunched her eyebrows together. "Why not?" 
Keefe shoved the custard burst in his mouth and looked to her, his blue eyes tinkling.
"Foster, there comes a time when I'll have to pass on my awesomeness to you and with that comes great responsibility and all my secrets." He winked at the last part and went back to eating.
"You have secrets?" The thought actually surprised Sophie. It didn't occur to her that Keefe actually might keep things from her, the thought was not pleasant.
"You don't know EVERYTHING about me. I'm pretty sure I don't know everything about you either." He said but didn't meet her gaze.
Sophie wanted to argue that Keefe did know everything about her, he had been the first one to know about the black swan, the first one who insisted on being involved with everything. The first on to know about Dex. The first one to trust her to see that he hasn't changed with the neverseen. Even the first one to know about Fitz. The memories bought how important Keefe was to her life and how much he been there for her. Has she done the same?
She didn't know everything about him and yet. Yet she trusted him with all her life, the thought that they were 'cognates' made actual sense to her, even more so than Fitz and her being Cognates.
Sophie took a seat beside him. "Well, since we are COGNATES after all we need to know everything about each other..." She let the thought trail off while watching Keefe's face. He actually blushed.
"Are you blushing?" Sophie asked biting back a smile.
"No..." He said and ate the custard burst whole so he wouldn't have to answer.
"Oh he definitely is. Aren't your Hunkyhair?" They both jumped to see Ro in the shadows. She smiled. "Forgot I was here? What do you think we'll let you prance into the night flirting?" 
It was Sophie's time to blush. She distracted herself with opening a prattles.
"I think it's a great idea by the way. You two should totally train together. Both of you are powerful think of how powerful you will be when you are combined. Besides I'm sure Hunkyhair would loooove to share with you Blondie." She came to flickering light and leaned against a pillar.
Keefe shot her a death glare. Which made Sophie wonder...
"So you do know everything about him?" Sophie asked ignoring the mock hurt on Keefe's face.
"Let's just say I do. But the thing is there's not much to know about. Just one little simple thing-" 
"I never said you didn't know me, I said you didn't know everything." Keefe said interrupting Ro while glaring at her.
"But you know everything about me." Sophie countered.
"No, I don't. Before you say anything, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. In fact it's good, we trust each to know what's important and what's not..." He scrunched his eyebrows together. "We really are cognates aren't we?" 
The words coming out of Keefe's mouth seem to make it real. But instead of worrying she smiled. She got up held out her hand to Keefe,
"I'm glad we are. We should probably grab some stuff to Elwin and to throw at each other when the other's asleep." Keefe gladly took her hand held on tight and didn't let go. Neither did Sophie.
***
After a hour of unpacking every prattles box they had and naming each pin. Sophie asked the question she been dreading to ask,
"Do you think Ro's right? That we should teian together?" 
Keefe stopped throwing the empty boxes across the room to see if Elwin will notice,
"I think so. Foster there's something I need to tell you..." He looked down to his hands where he was playing with the Frosty the Gulon (it was Sophie's idea.) "...before I do I need you to promise me that it won't change anything between us." 
Sophie wanted to disagree but trust she thought to herself. Trust.
"Okay. I promise." She got up fr her bed and moved to the end of Keefe's bed and sat cross-legged there. Leaning down to see Keefe's face.
"She did something to me. We all know that. Cause there's no way I went throw a black cocoon to come out like this. I know she did something because one I can feel it and two she told me."
Sophie wanted to start spewing out questions and threaten him to sill everything out. But she gulped them down and waited for Keefe to go on.
"When I collapsed she somehow found a way to contact me, she said that you were never supposed to make me remember or that they were planning on making me forget you."
"The change. I resisted it so they somehow made me forget you so that it wouldn't. She told me to stay dormant. As if there's something inside me that's asleep and going to wake up when when she says so." He stopped then, his fingers pressing on to the edges of the pin. Sophie inched closer wrapped her hands around his hands and forced him to look up.
"I don't know what she did to you or what's she going to do to you but what I do know is that it didn't change not even a little bit. Because you're strong Keefe. You've always been there for me and I know I haven't done the same for you but if you let me I will. Because noatter what she says it doesn't matter. Because you are Keefe Sencen. Master extraordinaire of the Hair." 
He smirked at that.
"Also we are make a pretty badass team. Team Foster-Keefe's always wins right?" She said.
Keefe finally gave her a smirk tighten his hands around her.
"Team Foster-Keefe always wins."